Monthly Archives: August 2015

[08/12/15] The United States government ran a much higher budget deficit in July than a year ago, but it is still on track for the lowest full-year deficit in eight years.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the July deficit totaled $149.2 billion, compared with a deficit of $94.6 billion a year earlier. The deterioration stemmed mainly from the fact that Aug. 1 fell on a Saturday. As a result, the government paid out $42 billion in August benefits in late July instead.

[08/11/15] American workers’ productivity rebounded in the second quarter, but a weak underlying trend suggested that inflation could pick up more quickly than economists have anticipated.

Nonfarm productivity increased at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-to-June period, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. But productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, rose only 0.3 percent from a year ago.

In line with annual revisions to gross domestic product, first-quarter productivity was revised to show a 1.1 percent rate of decline instead of the previously reported 3.1 percent pace of decline.

[08/07/15] The American economy delivered pretty much what was expected last month in terms of hiring, giving the Federal Reserve one more piece of evidence that conditions are strong enough to support an increase in the interest rate.

The pace of employment growth was steady, if not spectacular; the economy added 215,000 jobs in July. While not as robust as the gains recorded in May and June, Friday’s Labor Department report came in within 10,000 jobs of what forecasters had predicted, a notable feat of consistency in an economy that employs nearly 150 million people.